Katie Paterson is renowned for her multi-disciplinary, conceptually-driven artwork that explores themes of nature, ecology, geology, and deep time. Through collaborations with scientists and researchers worldwide, her ambitious projects delve into humanity’s place on Earth within the vast framework of geological time and transformation. Employing advanced technologies and specialized knowledge, Paterson creates intimate, poetic, and thought-provoking works that challenge our perceptions of the world. Blending a Romantic sensibility with a rigorous, research-based approach and minimalist aesthetics, her art bridges the gap between the viewer and the farthest reaches of time.

Paterson frequently works serially, starting with a single, seemingly impossible Idea—represented in this exhibition and throughout her body of work as short, haiku-like sentences crafted in sterling silver. These sentences pose questions about deep time and the boundaries between reality and imagination. The works, which may or may not materialize, take form in the minds of those who engage with them, becoming an expression of the idea itself. Often, these initial concepts expand into a range of interlinked inquiries, both material and philosophical.

This exhibition brings together a body of new interconnected works that mark a significant expansion of
Paterson’s studio practice. The artist has created paintings, sculptures, and works on paper with materials that
embody the physicality of our world and its origins. Delicately marbled watercolors are made with water drawn
from ancient ice cores. Minimalist geometric forms are painted with pigment ground from fossilized forms of the of the first life on this planet. Glass is fired with sands gathered from all the deserts on Earth. Black lacquer is infused with the ashes from over 10,000 unique species of trees. An hourglass is filled with stardust. An exquisitely hand-stitched embroidery brings extinct flowers back to life. Incense infuses the galleries with the scent of the first and last forests. The resulting objects distill vast, seemingly impossible distances into elegant forms, bringing our attention to an immense and tangible reality that lies beyond the limits of ordinary perception. New works in this exhibition expand on Mirage, 2023, the monumental glass artwork first developed by Paterson and longtime collaborators, architectural studio Zeller & Moye, for a major public sculpture for Apple Park in Cupertino. Mirage comprises over four hundred glass columns made with sand collected from deserts across the Earth. Together the columns combine the world’s deserts, transforming them into walls of glass flowing like dunes shaped by the wind.

Spanning the entire floor of the back gallery, Circe, 2024, features a minimalist arrangement of glass slices,
transitioning in a gradient from clear to pale blue, aquamarine and green hues. The artwork fuses together
sand from a diverse range of deserts, including mountainous, subtropical, coastal, rain-shadow, volcanic, and
polar deserts, as well as fossilized deserts that date back millions of years. Shifting layers of translucency and
color within the glass create illusionary effects. The artwork appears like an apparition: blurring the visible and
invisible, inside and outside, near and far. Like Mirage, Circe has a strong material presence, reflecting its immediate environment even as it contains an enormity of distant landscapes. Spectre, 2024, produced in collaboration with The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass, uses the same transportive material to stage a more intimate encounter. The viewer is invited to gaze through a window created from the sands of all the Earth’s deserts combined. Visitors see into the depths of time and space where millions of years merge. These works offer a deep and immersive connection to landscape, and a moment of reflection, encouraging visitors to pause, and attune themselves to the vastness and fragility of our planet. In this stillness, one encounters a collection of geological times and a plurality of states of being.

A unifying theme that emerges from these works is the exploration of time and transformation through
materiality. “Paterson looks to the stars, the seas, the earth and, with an ethical generosity, invites consideration of how we might attempt to understand these limits,” Lisa Le Feuvre, Director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, writes. Paterson draws deep connections between natural materials and their origins, spanning from ancient ice cores to the earliest life forms and matter predating the Sun. In doing so, she creates objects that reflect the continuity and interrelation of the Earth’s history, urging viewers to contemplate the intricate web of life and time that binds our existence to the natural world while creating space for transcendence and wonder.

This exhibition will be punctuated by several intimate stagings of Paterson’s incense project, To Burn, Forest, Fire. The gallery will host an inaugural burning during the opening reception, and burnings every weekend through the run of the exhibition.

Image caption:
KATIE PATERSON
Evergreen, 2022
351 extinct plants embroidered on linen
90 x 57 1/2 in
228.6 x 146.1 cm
Series of 10 plus 2 AP

JCG13436